Brahms: Chorale Preludes, Op. 122, Nos. 4-5 and 8-11 (transcribed by Busoni); David Froom: Variations on an Early American Hymn Tune; Scott Wheeler: Beach Spring; Sheree Clement: Teeth; Frederick Tillis: Spiritual Fantasy No. 4. Eliza Garth, piano. Centaur. $15.99.
In 1896, suffering physically from the pancreatic cancer that would claim his life the following year, and suffering emotionally from the death of the great love of his life, Clara Schumann, Brahms wrote his last work: a set of 11 chorale preludes for organ. Based on the verses of nine Lutheran chorales, with two of those set twice, the Chorale Preludes, Op. 122 were not published until 1902 – and in that year, Busoni transcribed six of them for piano. These Chorale Preludes are short works, mostly in the three-minute range, and are notable for their simplicity and a kind of gentleness born of a mixture of grief and resignation. They contain religious feeling that is otherwise largely absent from Brahms’ music, with even Ein Deutsches Requiem focused more on consolation on Earth than on anything celestial (Brahms at one point said he was tempted to change the title from “German” to “Human”).
Although the Brahms Chorale Preludes sound more apt for their expressive purposes on organ and in the full set of 11, they are more accessible in Busoni’s transcriptions and better known that way – although they are not played particularly often in any form. They require a performer’s willingness to set aside and eschew the more-familiar richness of Brahms’ sound world and focus, as in many of the composer’s late piano pieces, on simplicity of delivery and an effect that is more cumulative than individuated among the movements – with the concluding O Welt, ich muss dich lassen being clearly self-referential for Brahms in its quiet tenderness, and sounding all the more heartfelt as a result. Eliza Garth clearly understands the emotional space these short works occupy, offering a spare and carefully paced reading of the Busoni transcriptions on a new Centaur disc in which she adds a 20th-century work and three from the 21st century to Brahms’ late-19th-century sensibilities.
The overall effectiveness of this CD for listeners will largely depend on how they feel about the non-Brahms material, which is also largely hymn-based but does not fit as neatly into the Lutheran tradition as do Brahms’ Chorale Preludes. The three most-recent pieces were actually all written for Garth. Variations on an Early American Hymn Tune (2019) by David Froom (1951-2022) sounds from its title like music by Ives or paying homage to him, and in fact there is something Ivesian in the straightforward opening presentation of the basic tune and the contrasting dissonances and rhythmic alterations that follow. Froom quickly deviates from the theme’s initial simplicity of pacing and harmonization to present a piece more wide-ranging than, for example, Ives’ own variations on America. But Froom returns to some of the underlying melody’s basics often enough to keep his work well-grounded in its foundational material. The slow and quiet fadeaway ending is especially effective.
Beach Spring (2022) by Scott Wheeler (born 1952) is more harmonically adventurous from the start and more insistently dissonant than Froom’s piece. Wheeler persistently distorts the contours of his work’s underlying theme, and is fond of techniques such as presenting material in widely separated portions of the keyboard. There is little sense of the devout here, although the piece is not positioned strictly as a virtuoso exercise, either. Its overall effect is somewhat academic, with Wheeler ringing all sorts of changes on the thematic material as if demonstrating a multiplicity of methods of arranging and rearranging an essentially simple theme, repeatedly denying it harmonic consonance. Teeth (2021) by Sheree Clement (born 1955), which requires Garth not only to play but also to vocalize typically avant-garde verbiage (e.g., “hyena’s face”), goes even further, into electronic and pseudo-electronic realms, extended performance techniques, “prepared” piano elements, and other “look at me” (or “listen to me”) material that is about as un-hymnlike as the composer can make it. This piece is very much an acquired taste, and one that few listeners will likely choose to acquire in this context.
The Brahms Chorale Preludes follow the three 21st-century works on this CD but do not end the disc. Instead, Garth concludes with Spiritual Fantasy No. 4 (1981) by Frederick Tillis (1930-2020). Distinctly modernistic in approach but without most of the off-putting elements of Clement’s work (although using some of them), this Tillis piece never quite seems sure of its direction. It does not so much meander as stop and start, as if Tillis is trying on various keyboard techniques and sounds while trying to find the best one, or the best sequence. This goes on for quite some time – the work lasts 12½ minutes and seems longer – and has already become tiresome and repetitious by about one-third of its length. Individual elements are effective enough, but there is a slapdash quality to the way they are assembled, with the work as a whole feeling disconnected not only from anything spiritual but also from any attempt to engage an audience meaningfully. The eventual quiet conclusion sounds like an evaporation.
Garth’s fully committed pianism is exemplary throughout and is, all in all, the major reason listeners will find this disc meaningful. But this is, on the whole, an odd recording. The music itself amounts to an uneasy juxtaposition of undeniably effective material (Brahms, Froom, and to some extent Wheeler) with navel-gazing and rather self-important and self-focused (rather than audience-focused) works (Clement and Tillis). The overall impression is that the CD is a personal statement by Garth – whether regarding piano playing or about faith is a matter on which each listener will have to opine.
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